A vehicle configured to be capable of generating vehicle drive force by means of an electric motor, such as electric vehicle, hybrid vehicle, fuel cell vehicle, and the like, is mounted with a power storage device storing electric power for driving the electric motor. In such a vehicle, electric power is supplied from the power storage device to the electric motor to generate vehicle drive force for the purpose of starting or accelerating the vehicle for example, while electric power regeneratively produced by the electric motor is supplied to the power storage device when the vehicle is traveling on a downhill or decelerating for example.
There has been proposed a vehicle which is of the above-described type and configured to enable its power storage device to be charged from an external power supply such as commercial power supply by being electrically connected to the external power supply (in the following, this manner of charging will also be referred to simply as “external charging”). Such vehicles chargeable by this external charging include some vehicles having a timer charging function which works based on a scheduled time to end charging (or a time to start driving the vehicle next time) set by a user, so that charging will end immediately before the scheduled time to end charging.
For example, Japanese Patent No. 3554057 (PTD 1) discloses an apparatus for controlling charging of a storage battery in an electric vehicle, the apparatus being adapted to control a charger for charging the storage battery in the electric vehicle. Prior to charging, this charging control apparatus disclosed in PTD 1 detects a voltage value of a power supply connected to the charger when a power supply plug mounted on the charger is inserted in a power supply jack and thereby connected to the power supply. Then, a scheduled time to ride in the vehicle is set and thereafter an instruction so start charging is given. In response to this, based on an amount of discharge from the storage battery at the time the instruction to start charging is given, the detected voltage value of the power supply, and a predetermined value of the charging current, the time required for charging is calculated. Further, based on the set scheduled time to ride in the vehicle and the time required for charging, the time to start charging is calculated so that charging will end at the scheduled time to ride in the vehicle. When the time to start charging comes, charging is started with the value of the charging current.